


Mile Markers

by susurrant



Series: Roads [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dean Has Powers, M/M, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Unrelated Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:30:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4829210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susurrant/pseuds/susurrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is fourteen and he’s got a purple bruise on his cheek he’s trying to keep that side facing  the wall so no one looks too closely at it.</p><p>Snapshots of Dean growing up. AU where Dean isn’t a Winchester, and grows up kicked around in the foster system before running away as a teenager and eventually ends up hunting with John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mile Markers

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Non-explicit mentions of underage prostitution.

* * *

 

 

Dean is eight and Ms. Blakewell is looking at him with her eyebrows pinched together and her hands folded on the desk.

“Dean?” she says, and he clamps his mouth shut and kicks his heel against the chair leg. “Dean, we need to talk about this.”

They always do that, use your name all the time because they think it makes them sound like they care about you. Like they really know who you are, and that it means something.

“Why did you hit Tommy McKinnon?”

Dean stares out the window so hard his eyes feel like they’re burning. Ms. Blakewell lets out a heavy sigh and leans back in her chair. It’s a sound he’s pretty used to by now. Well, Ms. Blakewell can waste all the breathe she wants, but the fact is she’s sitting there with her nails painted all nice and she’s wearing this suit that looks like no one’s ever worn it before her; she’s got nice hair and nice eyes and she doesn’t know one stupid thing about him except his name and that he doesn’t have any parents to call.

“Why did you hit Tommy McKinnon, Dean?” She asks again and something twists in Dean’s stomach. Is she just going to keep him here forever asking and asking until he talks to her?

“You were in the middle of the lunchroom, everyone saw it. If he did something to make you mad, you could have walked away - you could have gotten a teacher. Mr. Flint was standing right over by the door, you could have asked him for help if Tommy was bothering you. But instead you knocked his lunch tray out of his hands and hit him.”

She pauses.

“And that wasn’t very smart was it? Because now you’re in trouble. You need to learn to pick your battles, Dean-o, or you’re not going to make it very far.”

And Dean looks up, even though he doesn’t want to, because Ms. Blakewell’s voice sounds kind of funny.

She’s smiling, but not in a friendly way. Dean knows how to tell when people are smiling because they’re happy and when they’re smiling because they’re pretending to be nice. Their mouths move but their eyes stay the same.

Except Ms. Blakewell’s eyes aren’t the same. They’re all yellow.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean is fourteen and he’s got a purple bruise on his cheek he’s trying to keep that side facing the wall so no one looks too closely at it. He stays in full view of the checkout counter - nothing pings a register monkey’s radar like a rough-looking kid sneaking around the back corner of a store. Rookie mistake. He considers his options. He’s got a crumpled up fiver in his pocket and he needs it to last him a couple of days.

Beef jerky is tempting for the protein but it’s too expensive compared to something like chips. He grabs a store brand bag of something or other off the bottom shelf, the bag feels like mostly air but it’s only a dollar and budget wins out over his stomach.

At the register he hands over his cash to a guy that looks like he might have been born right in the store fifty years ago and just never left. The guy punches up the order and makes his change and doesn’t notice Dean swiping two packs of cinnamon gum and a couple of Bic lighters right under his nose.

The lighters he figures he can trade to the smokers, or just lend out to curry some good will with his neighbors for the night. Same with the gum, although the sharp burn of the cinnamon might come in handy for staying awake and tamping down his growling stomach later on. The chips are only gonna last him so long.

The clerk gives him a vaguely disgruntled look when he insists on getting a bag for the chips, but he’s otherwise dismissed without so much as a ‘have a nice day.’

Dean fumbles the bag as he grabs it, slips some kind of granola bar from under the register and right up his sleeve. The clerk is already done with him, too wrapped up in watching some local news report - missing kids in some nearby suburb, and it looks like there’s gonna be a  storm tonight. Dean is ruefully thankful he insisted on the plastic bag; it’s better than nothing.

He mutters a thanks to the clerk and ducks out before the crinkling wrapper in his sleeve and his bulging pockets can give him away. Sleeping on the street tonight is gonna suck, but maybe (he hopes) just marginally less than last night did.

 

* * *

  

Dean is sixteen and he thinks it’s nothing he hasn’t done before, not really. Just not something he’s ever done for money, but fuck if that isn’t a healthy wad of cash on metaphorical table and it’d be damn nice to have that tucked away someplace safe next time the shit hits the fan.

The guy looks okay - not like a psycho or anything, although he thinks most of the serious bad guys probably look totally average, which sends a quick trill of anxiety down his spine. He licks his lips because why not and gives the guy a quick nod that he tries to make look smooth and practiced (it isn’t.)

Afterwards, when his jaw is aching and he’s scraping the top of his tongue with his teeth and spitting on the pavement, he thinks _maybe not again_ , but he’s lying to himself. Because he’s done it once now, no wiping that away, and if he’s back-against-the-wall and he needs to he knows he’ll do it again.

Now it’s an _option_ , not a last resort.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean is nineteen and there’s a guy at the bar with broad shoulders and a couple of days’ worth of stubble, drinking his way through double shots of whiskey like it’s water while he flips idly through a thick leather-bound journal.

 _Easy mark_ , Dean thinks, and he’s so very, very wrong.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean is twenty-three and he’s gonna have a serious case of stubble burn all over his neck and jaw and no idea how he’s supposed to hide that from Sam and Bobby, much less any clue what to do with the rapidly cooling spunk that’s plastered along the stomach of his t-shirt and his jeans.

John doesn’t seem to give two shits, he’s got his face buried in the join of Dean’s neck and shoulder and his hands are grabbing at Dean like he has to keep checking that every limb is still present and accounted for. It’s gonna leave bruises; more than what he’s got already.

Dean’s heart rate is slowly coming back to earth, because four fucking years of waiting had left him thinking maybe John would be hesitant about it once he finally broke but no, and he hadn’t really had time to react much less process anything in the last few minutes (or hours, or days) and there’s a morbid, cackling part of his brain that wants to make a joke about how John is definitely going to hell now, isn’t he?

Except there is not a single planet in the universe on which John would not take that shit seriously, and really, what the fuck is wrong with him that he even thinks that’s funny in the first place?

Dean slides a hand up along John’s forearm, feels the solid warm weight of him and thinks there’s no way John is dying just because some demon made a deal to get Sam back. When have they ever bothered to play by those rules, and why in the hell should they start now? Dean's hands feel almost burned raw, and his head is killing him again - the kind of thing he knows no pain pills are gonna be able to touch.

He clears his throat. “We should get cleaned up.”

But John is passed out next to him and at least for the moment, Dean is totally fine with that.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean is twenty-four and the fucking distributor cap’s been pulled from the Impala and John is in the fucking wind.

“He say anything to you?” Dean asks Sam over the phone, wiping a hand over his face and scanning the parking lot for a car that looks like a good candidate for a hot-wire.  The Impala's clearly out. He’s already checked the air vent, the toilet tank, and all the other likely hiding places he can think of for the cap. He’s guessing John took it with him, _bastard_ , which means the Impala isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Which, Dean knows, was exactly the point.

“No, but I just got a missed call, it wasn’t Dad’s number though. Wait - why?”

“‘Cause he’s fucking _gone_ , Sam! We’ve got three days left on the deal and your jackass of a father just _took off_.”

Dean hears Sam swear under his breath. “Okay, how long ago?”

“I don’t know, I got picked up by a couple of cops yesterday at a fill-up joint. Apparently I matched the description of a - ” _Oh._ Well, that whole thing makes sense now. _Goddammit_ , he thinks, not for the first time today. But Sam is talking again.

“ -n, start looking for witnesses, I’ll be there in a few hours. Maybe try checking in with his contacts, you think he would’ve said anything to Bobby?”

No, he wouldn’t. Because when John fucking Winchester decides to go it alone, he damn well does it. They can question anyone they want, they can spend days tracking down leads but it’s not going to do them one damn bit of good. There’s a reason John didn’t take the Impala - too recognizable. John wouldn’t have been sloppy enough to tip his hand to anyone, or let anyone at their shitty motel see him take off. Dean knows it in his bones. They’re not gonna find him.

“ _You and Sam look out for each other, you got it?”_ John had said the other night, and Dean had mumbled something back instead of answering, more out of shock than ambivalence. They never really talked afterwards. Usually they just went to sleep and spent the next morning playing it like nothing happened.

“ _Everything I taught you two - that’s all I get to leave behind, you got that? You watch out for each other. Pull each other back from that ledge.”_

And Dean had only been half-awake anyway, mumbling back _yeah_ and ‘ _course we will_ , and he hadn’t realized that it was as close as John was going to let him get to saying goodbye.

 

* * *

  

Dean feels too old for his twenty four years and too young to die, he thinks, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sam in front of the tomb.

He can feel the power rising, pulsing like a heartbeat in the pads of fingertips and the veins right behind his eyes. He can feel it from Sam too, and the tomb, and the lingering spicy sting of the broken devil’s trap that surrounds them.

Just about a year since the last time they were here, a forgotten little cemetery in Wyoming. It looks both exactly the same and completely different. Last time they were here, Dean had been running on fumes and desperation, and Sam had still been shaking off the rigor mortis.

Last time they were here, John had just sold his soul down to the pit.

“You ready?” Sam says.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Dean takes the Colt, because Sam’s had more practise at the other thing and this isn’t a time to take unnecessary risks.

The gun slams home in the lock just like last time, like they were made for each other and Dean guesses that’s exactly the point. Not for the first time, he wonders why the hell you’d make a door like this anyway, rather than just pouring a fuckton of concrete over it and calling it a day. That is, until he remembers that he’s one of the damn fools that’s trying to open the thing. Again.

He doesn’t expect to win this fight. He hasn’t told Sam that, because Sam is a scary motherfucker these days and that’s an argument he’d really rather avoid.

 _You need to learn to pick your battles_ , Yellow Eyes had told him once. And he had. Because he’s spent more of his life than he likes to think about being yanked around by demons, and now it’s his turn to do some yanking right back. It’s a tug of war he’s been playing for years without knowing it, but now he knows; now he knows he has a choice.

Dean learned early on if you wanted to survive, you had to choose the things that were worth fighting for. The things that were worth dying for. He chooses his battles carefully now.

He chose this one. 

**Author's Note:**

> Short and sweet! Okay, not really so much on the sweet side, really. I'm not slacking off, I swear - the next four fics in the series are at least five times longer than this (each). Consider it a teaser for what's to come.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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